“Simply Living” with Peggy Walker Barnes
You are ready to get organized but you are totally overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of the task. You have stopped and started, on your organizing quest, and you just don’t even know where to go from here. Well, help is on the way. I am going to give you a five step process to help you reach your goal and end up with a home and space that looks and feels the way you want it to look and feel.
1. Go around your home and decide the purpose(s) of each of the rooms. This will help you decide what belongs in each of the rooms. What do you realistically want each room to look like, feel like, and what is that room’s function?
2. Schedule a realistic amount of time to focus on the de-clutter process. “What gets scheduled gets done”. Start in one room and focus on one area of the room – a shelf, a draw, a cabinet. Make decisions about the items in that area and sort into categories – keep, throw away, give away, belongs in another room or undecided. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when you are making decisions about what to keep:
– Is this item adding value to my life?
– Is this item taking value away from my life?
– Does it work properly? Is it broken? (Is it worth my time to spend fixing it?)
– Am I keeping it because someone gave it to me or expects me to keep it?
– Can I get the information somewhere else?
– Do I have multiples of this item? How many do I realistically need?
– Am I keeping this “just in case”?
– Was it a bad/impulse purchase? Should I just chalk it up as that and let it go?
– How long has it been since I used or needed this item?
– Was this item here for a season of my life that is no longer.
3. Any of the remaining items should be sorted into like with like. For example, group all the office supplies together, all the books together, all the DVD’s, etc.
4. Decide where each of these categories need to live. The Benjamin Franklin quote, “A place for everything and everything in its place” still applies. You do not want “homeless” things in your space. If you have a lot of things without homes, you have a clutter problem.
5. Take the final steps of putting away – in their designated homes, donating – schedule time to get donated items to their donation homes, throwing away – put the trash bag in the trash can and making final decisions about that undecided box.
Clearing out clutter and getting organized is a matter of scheduling time, making some difficult decisions and following through with the next steps. This process will take time and it will take effort but I can assure you, you will not regret it.
By Contributing Author: Peggy Walker Barnes, Keep It Simple Girl™